Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Can we take back the word "attack"

I despise exaggerated language.

Case in point: President Obama's re-election campaign has started, a website to collect and respond to criticism of the president. The campaign also encouraged Twitter users to include #AttackWatch in their messages to help them collect information, but that strategy has humoursly backfired as only Obama critics are using the hashtag and as I write this are flooding Twitter with comments like "I'd like to report a crime. All of the Obama stickers on cars are disappearing" and "I think my friend's a Tea Party Terrorist; keeps talking about paying down debt & personal responsibility."

My issue isn't the strained Orwellian comparison to reporting on your neighbors that some people are making, it's this trend of using the word "attack" when talking about criticism.

Attack is a word associated with violence and malice. It drips with negativity and contempt. Criticism, however, is a necessarily part of free speech. When you see something you disagree with, you should be able to respond to it. That's a hallmark of scientific skepticism. As Ken at likes to say, speech is not tyranny.

When Naomi Klein wrote "The Shock Doctrine," her manipulation of statistics to prove that liberalization of economies harms poor people was like building a pirate ship from a Lego blocks packaged in a fairy princess castle set - it required a lot of creativity and a willingness to place things incorrectly. Economist Jonah Norberg responded to her claims, and she wrote back with an essay titled "One Year After the Publication of The Shock Doctrine, A Response to the Attacks"

Emphasis added. To his credit, Norberg sarcastically called his slam-dunk reply "Three Days After Klein's Response, Another Attack" and in the subtitle stated "In Klein's world, criticism is an attack, unless she does the attacking." He then proceeded to give the greatest political, scientific and statistical uppercut of the decade on Klein's thesis.

Saying you were "attacked" when someone criticizes you is thin-skinned and cowardly, and it's not just liberals who are throwing the word around. If you aren't emotionally stable enough to be criticized, then you have no business speaking up in the first place.


  1. A lot of political dialog today "drips of negativity and contempt" in the form of ad hominem remarks. Many of those remarks are mentioned for the soul purpose of discrediting their target. At the higher echelons of politics, where the intellectual caliber is higher, you know it's intentional - as opposed to an inability to make a logical argument. In that case, I would consider the maneuver malevolent and an "attack."

    Not that I think Obama's strategy is a good one. Creating a website highlighting his criticisms - valid or not - is dumb.

  2. I think it smacks of the things oppressive regimes try all the time. It's not on the same level of seriousness but there is still a "ministry of truth/big brother" kind of feel to it.

    Especially with the evil looking website.

    I'm determined to waste as much money as I can, I've already reported myself several times.